Startup Guides > Does Your Marketing Strategy Work For You?

Why isn't anyone buying your products and services? It doesn't matter how great your products and services are or how nice your offices look if no one has heard of you. That's where good marketing comes into play. Unfortunately, many small businesses make the mistake of focusing all of their efforts on other aspects of their company and forget to make marketing a top priority. When that happens, businesses struggle and often fail. What is your marketing strategy, and does it work?

If you're still relying on traditional banner ads and those outdated outbound marketing tactics to help you reach the masses, you might be in trouble. People are not interested in being force-fed a message that your brand is the best or that they should buy your product. In fact, today's consumers are actually paying money to opt out of advertising. Whether it's while watching TV, playing games on their smartphones and tablets, or navigating the internet, people will shell out cash in order to avoid outbound marketing.


So, what's the solution? The smartest brands are deploying inbound marketing strategies instead. As the name suggests, inbound marketing is the total opposite of outbound. Rather than cramming a message down your audience's throat, you're actually allowing your prospective customers to come to you, powered by their own searches and needs. This yields organic leads that are actually interested in what you have to offer, and are much more prepared buy.

The goal is to have your customers seek you out rather than the other way around, but in order to be found, you have to provide some bait. With inbound marketing, it's your job to create unique, relevant, informative content that will cater to the needs and interests of your customers. This can be accomplished through maintaining a regular blog, creating YouTube videos, writing e-books, posting on social media, etc.

Don't forget to include social media in your marketing strategy. With billions of people logging onto social media platforms each day, it's imperative that you maintain active accounts that allow you to engage with your audience through posting regular updates and integrating shareable content. This will expand your reach even faster and further than ever before.

Speaking of social media, sites like 40Billion.com specialize in the promotion of small businesses by broadcasting social media posts to its large network of several million users across the most popular social networking sites - including Twitter, LinkedIn, 40Billion, and even Facebook. Innovative services like tweet ads, future retweets, and promoted company listings were created for entrepreneurs and marketing managers to tap into a growing, active network online without spending thousands on pay-per-click ads or traditional outbound marketing.

Stepping up your marketing game is a lot easier than you might initially think. Inbound marketing is not only extremely effective, but it is also very budget-friendly, and can save you a lot of money that was previously spent on outbound tactics that don't work.

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